Generally speaking, any Chinese character input method requires the user's brain to consciously carry out certain kind of “preprocess” on the desired input characters before he or she can decide which key to type. For example, Pinyin input methods require users to first “associate” the desired characters with Pinyin; phonetic/ideographic or ideographic/phonetic input methods require users to first “collect” the phonetic and ideographic information of the desired characters, and then further process these information. An ideal Chinese character input method should make full use of the processing habit that Chinese character users have formed during longtime writing and reading without introducing new or additional process, or introducing as less as possible.
An optimized Chinese character input method should meet the related national standards or regulations on Chinese character structure and writing. To improve input efficiency, the existence of some illegal rules, i.e. the input rules that violate national standards or regulations, is understandable. However, user's legal inputs, i.e., the inputs that meet national standards or regulations, must be also supported. For example, it is understandable to make the input of  as illegal  but it would be unacceptable if the legal input  is not supported. Actually, a Chinese character input method should encourage users to input in the ways that meet national standards and regulations, which will help to keep the tradition of Chinese characters as well.
Moreover, a Chinese character input method should make the arrangement of elements on the keyboard have more ergonomic benefits so that users can type at a high speed while consuming less energy by, for example, less finger movement.